Leroy Kelly

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, my father would follow my mother around the house before Election Day, lecturing her to vote Republican. "I don't know who I'm voting for yet," my mother would lie, cheerily. "And it's a secret ballot, don't forget." Those exchanges — funny, good-natured, even sweet — bring home to me that while politics has always divided us, today our differences run deeper, wider and depressingly more bitter. Partisanship rules, from the halls of Congress to the kitchen table. We've traded in presenting facts for scoring points, precision for volume, dialogue for sarcasm. Or we've just shut up, ceding...

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When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, my father would follow my mother around the house before Election Day, lecturing her to vote Republican. "I don't know who I'm voting for yet," my mother would lie, cheerily. "And it's a secret...